The inventive concept relates to a storage device, and more particularly, to a method and system for allowing a computer system to authenticate a storage device connected to the computer system through an intermediate converter.
Advances in digital technology have led to an increase in the amount and types of devices that are easy to carry and have multifunctional multimedia functions. Examples of such devices include digital camcorders, mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Many such devices use a memory card including integrated circuit (IC) chips, such as flash memory, in order to store data or extend memory. Examples of memory cards include memory sticks (MS), multimedia cards (MMC), XD picture (XD) cards, secure digital (SD) cards, compact flash (CF), smart media cards (SMC), and micro drives (MD).
These memory cards are small and easily portable, but become more expensive as capacity increases. Since memory cards should comply with corresponding specified standards, an exclusive card reader or multi-type card reader is needed according to the type of memory card used. Also, use of a card reader may be inconvenient since the card reader should be connected to a computer system in order to use the card reader. The card reader may be used to read data from a memory card, or to receive data from or to transmit data to the memory card. For example, in the case of a smart card, a micro chip module manufactured according to ISO7816 standards is built into a magnetic plastic card, so that information may be read from or written to an IC chip. Thus, the smart card may exchange data with a computer system through serial communication by touching the smart card to the card reader.
A memory card and a card reader may be electrically connected according to various interface standards, e.g., universal serial bus (USB) standards, personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA) standards, PS2 standards, etc. If the memory card is connected to a computer system via the card reader, the card reader allows the memory card to be seen as a USB storage device by the computer system and does not expose information regarding the memory card to the computer system. In this case, the computer system cannot read vendor information stored in the memory card.
In general, a memory card manufacturing company supports only its memory cards, and wants to promote its products by distinguishing them from other companies' products using a program providing special functions. However, a computer system is not capable of determining whether a memory card connected to a card reader provides such additional functions.